Chapter 5. Discussion
5.2. IB Program Policies and School Leadership Encourage Collaborative Lesson Planning . 47
The findings revealed that teachers are required to plan lessons and unit planners collaboratively. There are certain documents in the IB Program that stipulate the CLP practice and require everyone to follow them. These documents are “From Principles to Practice” and
“Subject Guides”. In “From Principles to Practice” there is Section C: Curriculum. Section C consists of four Standards. Standard C1 is called collaborative planning. “From Principles to Practice” clearly indicated MYP requirements related to CLP: “The school has an approach to curriculum planning that involves all MYP teachers” (IBO, 2014, p. 17). However, the findings revealed that some teachers do not know about those significant IB policy documents regarding CLP, and do not use them for planning lessons. The observation data revealed that teachers use “From Principles to Practice” only for formulating lesson objectives and for
looking up verb definitions for task specific clarifications of assessment sheets. The researcher noticed that the “Subject Guide” is used for designing formative and summative assessment tasks rather than everyday lesson plans. Teachers use the “Subject Guide” for assessment tasks because they are requested to prepare assessment sheets for three to four different phases of students. One of the Program Coordinators mentioned about the “My IB”
online platform, where teachers could build a teacher network with all other IB teachers worldwide. Although, the researcher noted that during one of CLP sessions teachers claimed about the absence of access to that platform. Up until the end of data collection via observations, neither of the teachers received access to that platform.
Overall, despite the research findings that school leadership encourages and supports teachers in CLP and teachers are actively involved in CLP sessions, IB policy documents are mainly used for designing assessment tasks purposes. Responses regarding IB policy documents that facilitate CLP varied, which shows inconsistency of following certain policy documents or regulations.
5.3. Teachers’ Perspectives on Benefits and Challenges of Collaborative Lesson Planning According to the research findings, it was revealed that teachers of an IB school, MYP Program were actively engaged in CLP, and were aware of its benefits and challenges. The research findings were based on responses of novice and experienced teachers, Program Coordinators, observations of CLP sessions and interviews.
Teachers were aware of collaborative lesson planning and perceived it to have both benefits and challenges. The school leadership encouraged teachers to plan lessons collaboratively. However, very few teachers were able to articulate its benefit to better understanding/ learning of IB programs, curriculum peculiarities and professional growth as a whole. Consequently, teachers' level of knowledge of Adult Learning Theory (Malcolm Knowles’ Andragogy) was limited. Although, data analysis shows that teachers are aware of
critical features of Desimone's Professional Development Theory, as they mentioned these features in their responses inexplicitly referring to the theory.
Benefits of using CLP. In the study conducted by Bauml (2014) the experience of one novice teacher was observed, and made a conclusion that CLP greatly helped to acquire such knowledge as developing curricular knowledge, better content delivering, giving clear instructions, feeling confident while teaching and getting contextual knowledge about the school. The literature review demonstrated that experienced teachers benefit from CLP sessions too. Similarly, in both observation teams teachers who had a sufficient experience of teaching (the researcher - 10 years, Participant B, T1-11 years, Participant C, T2 - 6 years) claimed that each CLP session they were acquiring new knowledge regarding resources and IB requirements such as ATL, Learner's Profile etc. This example shows that teachers (adults) learn by doing things in practice (Knowles’ 1984). Similarly, six out of seven participants showed positive attitudes towards CLP. As one participant shared CLP with her colleagues helped her to better and more quickly understand IB requirements for lesson planning.
Another participant claimed that with the help of CLP she learned a lot about different activities to do in a classroom. She stated that CLP sessions helped her to understand the IB program, its requirements, curriculum characteristics and assessment criteria. Constant communication with teachers while lesson planning improved her teaching strategies and positively influenced her teacher-student relationships.
Professional development: sharing ideas and experiences. Two teachers and two Program Coordinators out of seven interview participants mentioned the impact of CLP on professional development. They claimed that constant exchange of ideas, reflections on units, discussions about summative assessment tasks and students' achievements, various ways of improving student learning that take place during CLP sessions significantly improved their knowledge. During the observations, the researcher noticed that team members became more
confident in making decisions related to the choice of proper resources, assessment criteria and even solving some issues regarding behaviours of students. Similarly, in studies conducted by Desimone (2009, 2011) teachers improve their professional level in various ways such as mentoring, co-teaching and teacher network. A range of other scholars (Bauml, 2016; Meirink et al., 2010; Merritt, 2016; Thousand et al., 2006) noted that planning lessons collaboratively with colleagues is the highest level of teacher collaboration and professional learning of teachers. The research findings revealed that teachers of this particular IB school follow the core features of Desimone's PD Theory such as content focus, active learning and collective participation. These features were present in participants’ responses concerning professional development. Another two features: coherence and durations were mentioned by participants while discussing teachers’ time management and the benefits of CLP on it.
Teachers’ time management and shared responsibilities. Kaplan, Chan, Farbman and Novoryta (2015) highlight the importance of time for teachers to keep balanced and not overloaded. If CLP functions well in a school, it makes teachers’ work much easier. Indeed, the research findings revealed that doing things together makes it easier and less stressful for teachers, who are often overloaded with a lot of responsibilities. Thus, three teachers out of seven interviewed participants agreed that consistency of CLP sessions in their school is a great help for teachers to save time by sharing responsibilities. For example, a novice teacher Participant A, T2 said that with a lot of additional classes to teach her students, it would have been very difficult for her to find time to plan lessons every day individually. Participant F admitted that sometimes she asks to share ready lesson plans and resources from her colleagues, because being a Program Coordinator she keeps very busy. She added that sharing responsibilities is a good strategy to sustain CLP: “but teachers need to discuss the unit and the outline first, then each teacher can adapt the lesson with all materials according to the needs and interests of their students”. During observations, the researcher revealed that each
teacher had at least two grade levels to teach, which meant that they had to prepare lessons for two different curricula. Thus, prior discussion of the unit, weekly topic, lesson objectives, assessment criteria, planning lessons in pairs and sending to a grade leader for moderation was a very useful solution for teachers of this particular school. Hence, as Murawski (2012) stated, once a team has set effective strategies for planning lessons collaboratively, less time this practice would take later.
Challenges of using CLP. In their studies conducted by Bauml (2014, 2016) and Merritt (2016) two main factors were considered as challenges of planning lessons collaboratively with colleagues: lack of time and teachers’ unwillingness to cooperate with other colleagues. Indeed, both interviews with participants and observations discovered that teachers did not gather to plan lessons together apart from the appointed days and time. This kind of behaviour was not relevant to those teachers who planned lessons in pairs though, as they tried to find spare time to plan lessons and send them to a grade leader, for example in Team two. Besides the appointed day and time for CLP, teachers were not eager to discuss lesson plans or any other issues.
Time scarcity: an obstacle to CLP. Teachers in this IB school were very busy mostly working with students. The school was private, thus teachers had many additional lessons to conduct for less progressive students. Also, MYP students are engaged in various social and research projects, which are conducted under supervision of teacher-advisors. The school leadership is both supportive and demanding at the same time. Thus, teachers spend most of their spare time from teaching classes on individual work with students. As mentioned in the study of Merritt (2016) insufficient time for planning lessons is an obstacle in successful implementation of any educational reforms. MYP Program Coordinators pay attention to teachers’ CLP meetings, thus assigning grade leaders to take responsibility for the presence and engagement of all teachers in CLP sessions. The researcher noted that none of teachers
used to miss CLP sessions without any reason, and Program Coordinators participate in these meetings too at a time. The role of school leadership is crucial in allocating specific time and place for CLP meetings to take place. Hence, another strategy that works in this IB school is a smart scheduling of teachers’ timetable and the discipline of conducting CLP sessions.
Resistance to collaboration. The observations during the study noted that some teachers demonstrated indifference and lack of interest during CLP sessions. For example, Participant E was convinced that individual planning was better than CLP, because she thought that each teacher had different students, thus lessons should be planned according to their needs and interests. She added that she was not benefitting much from CLP sessions.
However, as discussed earlier, Program Coordinators claimed that they did not limit, on the contrary, encouraged teachers to adapt collaboratively planned lessons to suit their needs.
Bauml (2016) identified two major threats that teachers usually feel when asked to collaborate. These are conflicts/ clash of interests and loss of autonomy. In this study, only one participant out of seven demonstrated her unwillingness to collaborate with her colleagues for lesson planning. Merritt (2016) suggested solving this kind of issue by providing less teaching and more planning time. In this regard, Participant G who is a Program Coordinator mentioned that while scheduling teachers’ timetables they try to free one day in a week to let teachers prepare for lessons. Another solution proposed by Achinstein (2002) considers clash of interests and even cause of conflicts as a natural phenomenon, thus suggests school leadership to provide teachers with necessary time and working conditions to make teachers work collaboratively. Since the majority of interviewed teachers of the school did not resist collaborating, it is concluded that school leadership followed the right strategy of providing teachers with sufficient time and conditions to work collaboratively, including CLP.
5.4. Impacts of Collaborative Lesson Planning Strategies on Teachers’ Professional